1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a communication network, and more particularly to a system and method of adaptively regulating a slicer for an Ethernet receiver.
2. Description of Related Art
Ethernet is a computer networking technique that is widely used in constructing a local area network. 10BASE-TX, for example, is specified in IEEE 802.3 and can transfer data at a nominal rate of 10 Mbit/sec. Data is transferred over an unshielded twisted-pair (UPT) cable with a specified length.
An Ethernet receiver commonly uses a slicer to map a received signal into one of some predetermined values. The slicer compares the received signal with one or more fixed threshold values in order to determine the mapped output.
However, as the UPT cable length is expanded, aged or disposed in a noisy environment, the received signal at the receiver side may probably be decayed or have lower signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The fixed threshold values in the receiver's slicer cannot follow the signal decay, and the receiver's performance therefore becomes deteriorated.
For the reason that conventional Ethernet receiver could not effectively receive data in a noisy environment, a need has arisen to propose an adaptive receiver that is capable of automatically detecting and adjusting parameters of the receiver.